Heres the thing about any adventure it never quite ends up being what you think its going to be. Take for example my first moose hunt which took place from Oct 15th to Oct 20th 2011. The hunt began with my father asking me to go with him and his buddy, they go to Canada just about every year to hunt black bear, well I'm not really into that so Dad asks every year and I politely decline, it's not that I'm not into hunting a bear or scared to hunt a bear I'm just not really into hunting an animal over bait, for me it takes all of the hunt out of the hunt, now I'm not opposed to anyone else doing it and if its your thing I don't want to take any thing away from that, all I'm saying is it isn't my thing, but enough of that. So any way I'm about to politely decline once again, when my father utters the words moose hunt instead of bear hunt, whoa wait a minute, thats on my bucket list, of course I want to go but moose hunts tend to be really expensive and I really am not ready to spend that kind of money so even with one side of my brain screaming the words well hell yeah I wanna go the other side of my brain (the logical one) wins out once again, so now I'm trying to politely tell my father I'm not going to go but before I can say anything he says “ now darn it I'm not getting any younger and if your going to go to go with me on one of these hunts it better be soon” so, guess what I'm going to Canada. Now this story is about emotions and there was the first emotion I went through on this hunt, guilt, I'm feeling guilt because all of the years I didn't want to go to Canada I was missing the big picture, it wouldn't have been about killing a bear over bait it would have been about spending some time with my father doing something we both love, being a part of nature. This leads me to my next emotion FEAR, fear of what you might ask, My Wife, as now I have to tell her I just agreed to spend thousands of dollars to go moose hunting.
Our original plan was to go to the same outfitter that Dad bear hunts with and the cost was going to be somewhat less than I had anticipated but we also weren't going to get much for our money basically a place to hunt, a place to sleep and assistance retrieving the moose should we be fortunate enough to get one, I didn't think that this was a very good deal for the money but I knew Dad really liked this place so I was going to be okay with it and make the best out of what ever happened, but as plans go this was like most and quickly evaporated. Dad called one day early in 2011 and said we weren't going to be able to go moose hunting at Terry's (thats the name of the owner where Dad always goes) because Terry was no longer doing moose hunts for non residents, this proved to be my first emotional let down as I did not think we would be able to find a reputable outfitter for the same money, so maybe I'm not going moose hunting now and the hell of it is I had to experience fear of my wife for nothing if we don't go. So the hunt was on, not for a moose but an outfitter, I looked at lots of web pages, and emailed lots of outfitters but just could not come up with another moose hunt for the same money so I prepared myself for the reality that we would not go moose hunting and really hit an emotional low because I was close to doing something I really have always wanted to do. As the saying goes “tomorrow is a new day” and with it came the news that dad found and outfitter that looks promising and for the same money it would be a guided hunt with meals, that sounded too good to be true to me as I had done lots of searching and guided hunts were twice the money we had planned to spend. So now I'm skeptical and my emotions are guarded as I don't want to be let down again, but we've all heard the stories of hunters being taken for a ride with shady outfitters and I was afraid thats what might be going on here. We gave it due diligence and called some of their references all of which spoke highly of them but really how hard would it be to forge some references and for the kind of money were talking about it would be profitable too. If were going moose hunting this year its getting awful late to not have an outfitter so we don't have the luxury to scrutinize every detail we would have to take some risk and book this hunt, fortunately the deposit was small and we wouldn't be out much if we found out some bad news later on. Now I'm excited again we are going moose hunting.
Over the next few months I would go about my daily life and from time to time my mind would wander to Quebec and our upcoming moose hunt, I have never been to Quebec or Canada for that matter so I begin to form my own mental picture of what this moose hunt is going to be like. My Quebec looks just like the Yukon or Newfoundland and thats because all of the moose hunting shows I have watched are in those two places. I also begin to form this mental picture that we were going to be spotting and stalking along rivers and marshes on open ground and there are going to be huge bulls around every bend of the river, how much fun this is going to be I would think. Many days my mind would wander to my Quebec and as such my day would be a little better, some how the thought of wide open spaces, a sky with no commercial jet traffic and a world with only sounds that mother nature has created this would have a calming effect on me and help to get me through another day at the office.
In September it started to become real, a month or less to go I really started to watch all of the hunting shows, my DVR set to record everything moose and moose hunting, I watched Jim Shockey's daughter bag a huge bull in Newfoundland after seeing and passing countless other bulls, she also did it with the same gun I'm taking a Thompson Center Encore 50 Caliber, I also watched Michael Waddel lance a sixty plus inch bull from thirty yards with a bow after spooking it off and calling it back into range. Emotionally I'm primed, these hunting shows had me worked up into a moose frensy and all that was left to do was show up in Quebec and pick the bull I wanted to shoot, it has to be that easy doesn't it.
We left for Canada on October thirteenth, I had not slept very well the night before probably because of all the 60 inch bulls running around in my Quebec but none the less I would be too excited to sleep on the trip as we all talked almost exclusively about moose for 20 hours of driving. I'm sure my father and his buddy had been in the same boat emotionally I had been in as we all talked about where we would hang our trophy's and how we wanted our hunts to go and what we had seen our favorite hunting show host do just like we were masters of our universe and killing a huge bull was a given just like going to Kroger and buying steak. During the drive up we were all very excited to see a moose, for me it would be my first but after hours of driving passing countless marshes we did not see a moose except on billboards and road signs so I began to speculate that the moose was a mythical creature not unlike the yeti or the unicorn and that moose and moose hunting was all a big conspiracy by the Canadian government to attract American dollars to Canada, we had many good laughs about my theory on the drive up and never did see a moose.
Before we had left I had been watching the weather in Laniel Quebec as it was 4mi outside of camp, in Laniel the weather had been hot the entire week before we got there with highs in the upper 70's, which by the way was the first week of rifle season for the moose and we were arriving for the second week, boy them poor suckers who thought that the first week was the way to go are paying for their arrogance, we did not book our hunt soon enough to get the first week I was pretty excited that it had been hot and the forecast was for highs in the low 50's with lows in the 30's and some rain each day for our week, perfect, cool temps cloudy skies fronts moving through, for a deer hunter you couldn't ask for any more and what is a moose just a big deer right? While we were driving up to camp from the southern part of Quebec I began to realize that my Quebec looks nothing like the real Quebec there are trees here lots and lots of trees but thats okay I didn't really expect it be exactly how I had envisioned it and I'm still sure we will all kill our moose. As we pulled into camp I noticed several moose heads outside what appeared to be the butcher house, and I remember thinking welcome to Quebec where the moose are plentiful and dumb, it looks like they had a pretty good hunt last week and with the hot temperatures we ought to have an outstanding hunt this week. During our initial conversations with Yves the owner we learned that they had in fact killed 8 moose, 3 bulls, 3 cows and 2 calves, we also learned that it was fore-casted to have high winds the next two days and that apparently was not conducive to moose hunting, wind that cant have that much effect on moose, I thought, I've killed plenty of deer when it was windy. The wind thing, I was dead wrong about that, it has a huge bearing on your probability of killing a moose, you see moose don't see so well and they really really trust their ears so when its windy they cant hear very well and lay up until the wind dies down. As we made our way around camp that first evening and met our guides I learned something else about the real Quebec they don't speak English here, go figure that one. The not speaking English thing didn't have to much effect on my hunt as my guide did speak some English (as for my Dad he was not so fortunate his guide couldn't speak a lick of English) but I did learn that if you get to talking real fast they would just smile and nod, that doesn't mean that they are agreeing with you either, it's just their way of being polite when they don't understand you. We got through that issue and I learned to slow down, use smaller words and and lots of gestures with my hands.
Before I begin to talk about the hunt we should talk about my guide as he was a pretty amazing individual and exactly the person I thought I wanted to be before a I grew up and decided that my career choice had to be about money. His name is Silvan and he is about the same age as me, he works full time for Yves, in the spring he guides for bear, during the summer he works on the cabins and the camp and guides for moose in the fall. The guiding for moose in the fall is not quite as glamorous as it sounds for two reasons in Silvan's case; One being that since the woods are so thick and moose hear so well someone has to cut trails back to the marshes some of which are miles from the lake and the trails have to be big enough to get a four wheeler through for retrieving the downed moose and cleared enough to let the hunters pass without making a sound, that's Silvan's job. For the second reason, its because in Quebec moose are hunted on the party system it takes any where from 2 hunters to 7 hunters depending on what zone your in to form a party each hunter suppling a portion of the tag, in our case it was 2 hunters to a party Silvan supplied the second tag so once his client killed a moose he was done guiding for moose for the year and done moose hunting for himself as well. Silvan is the only guide that works full time for Yves and has worked for him for fourteen years as such he knows most every thing about this whole operation and also about moose and how to hunt them. Silvan was a perfect fit to guide for me, he takes his hunting very serious and works very hard as do I sometimes too serious in my case but thats the kind of person I am, but we proved to be a good fit as he was willing to do whatever it took to help me get my moose. I asked Silvan one day where he learned to speak English, my assumption was that it was in school as he spoke pretty well but he told me that he had learned working for Yves and guiding American moose and bear hunters, he really thought he struggled with English and blamed it on the fact that he really only interacted with people in English during their ride to the bear bait or the moose hunting spots and only during the bear and moose season, I am floored by that as I took Spanish in high school and the only thing I know is “dos cervesas por favor “ (two beers please).
The first morning we hunted started out with breakfast at the dining hall, not just any breakfast but a five star breakfast, the Camp cook couldn't speak a lick of English and she was much older than I am and not very attractive but I contemplated asking her to marry me just so that I could eat like that every day. After that amazing breakfast and during the boat ride to our first hunting location my mind wandered back to my Quebec and those 60 inch bulls we were about to go kill. The day before I had discussed with the owner that I was willing to do whatever it took to get my moose and if he had a spot that was so tough to get to that no one else had wanted to hunt it that I was his man, some how this got translated to I wanted to go to the spot that was the furthest away from everything and boy did he give me what he thought I asked for. Our first hunting location started out with a 20 minute climb straight up a mountain (yeah they have those here, I know there not in My Quebec either) followed by a 20 minute decent down the other side which at that point I'm thinking this isn't so bad, well, that was just the first mountain. Once we got to the marsh Silvan tells me to sit here at the edge of the marsh and he would position himself in the woods to call the moose. Later I found out what his strategy was which was that the moose only calls from the woods never from the marsh and would always circle and come in from down wind to the calls, the way we were positioned would make this work perfectly. The wind was blowing but I didn't think it was too much and it was also raining, no big deal though, the moose will be here as soon a Silvan begins to call I thought. In my Quebec Jim Shockey has taught me that the calls are pretty loud and you need beat a boat oar into tree limbs to simulate a bull moose thrashing a tree on his way in to do mortal combat with whoever is in his territory. So I prepare myself to hear Silvan calling the moose just like Shockey, after an hour of not hearing anything ,I think well maybe he is waiting for the right time to call. After three hours of not hearing him call my mind has wondered off to the point that Silvan has either got in a fight with moose or a bear and has lost or he has left me, so being the kind of guy I am I leave my spot to go check on Silvan and find him right where he said he would be, I ask him why he doesn't call to which he replies that he calls very softly as its not natural for a moose to be loud, thats not what Shockey says I thought but oh well he is the guide and I'm a dumb American who hasn't even seen a moose. The first morning was a bust and Silvan explains to me that the wind is very bad and the moose will not move in the wind, I think to myself that its no problem that the wind cant be that bad for us, hes just trying to pacify me since we hadn't killed a moose yet. At the end of the mornings hunt we made our long trek back to the boat to return for lunch, I wasn't going to complain about that either as I had been rained on for the last 5 hours. The evening hunt went much the same way as the morning hunt had, more wind and more rain no moose, I thought to myself that maybe this moose hunting may be a little more difficult than I had imagined, but being the glass half full kind of guy I am I told myself that it would be better tomorrow and pushed those feelings of disappointment I had to the back of my mind where they belonged. Day two's hunt was more of the same with the exception that mother nature must have decided I liked that weather so she gave us all we wanted of it, I really don't think that the wind blew less than 25 mph all day and the rain came down in buckets continuously. One emotion I had not thought I would experience on this hunt was fear not the kind of fear I experienced with my wife when I told her I was going moose hunting but the kind of white knuckled fear you experience when your in a tiny boat on a big lake and the wind is blowing up 3 foot waves. I have had plenty experience on big water in my bass boat and 3 foot waves aren't too bad in it but we were in maybe a 14 foot dingy with a 20 horse tiller steer motor and I'm riding in the very bow of the boat experiencing every ounce of energy mother nature threw at us. Well at the end of day two we were all about as low as we could get, the reality that my Quebec did not exist had really sunk in along with the possibility that we would not see a moose, the weather was forecasted to be more of the same all week with only scattered pockets of calm weather. Along with the three of us there were maybe 12 other guys in camp, some of which we never met because they were hunting un-guided and did not eat meals in the dining hall, but we did hear some reports about how they were doing and no one had seen a moose yet, and by the end of the second day I believe every one was in the same place I was.
Yves made an announcement that he was going to move all the hunters to new locations today, this really lifted everyones moral and again the possibility of my Quebec creeped back into my thoughts, a new location would be just what the doctor ordered and with it would come a new opportunity to kill my moose. If you have hunted anything you know what this feeling is like, its just like the saying about the grass being greener on the other side. I've hunted long enough to know that moving locations is only good if your moving out of a bad spot and in to a good spot, but if your in a good spot and move to another good spot you haven't gained anything but it always gives you a new hope for the future. That first morning as we headed to our new spot, I learned that we would have to show two other guide/ hunters groups to their new spots as well since this was the first season these two guides had guided here and weren't real familiar with the territory, it was not a big deal we just had to show them the trail head from the lake then we motored the boat over to our spot the only thing it did was make us a little bit later than I would have hoped to get to the marsh. This new spot immediately improved my outlook on life as it did not have any mountains to cross and was only a 20 min hike. Being late was not a big deal either since the wind was blowing about 30 on this morning I knew we were wasting our time but being the optimist that I am I knew I could not kill a moose from the comfort of the cabin so I trudged on and put on my best I am happy to be here face. On our hike back to the marsh I had a real revelation, I realized what I was really here for, for the first time, it wasn't about my Quebec or harvesting that 60 inch bull it was about being in nature, forgetting all the stresses of my daily life and going on a new adventure all of which was happening all around me and I was too blind to see it. With my epiphany I really began to enjoy myself, life was grand again I was really in tune with nature, I saw eagles, grouse, beaver, crows, I listened to the wind and had time to reflect on this world and my place in it, life was good and I no longer really cared if I got a moose or not.
That afternoons hunt brought with it an evening of calm cool weather along with that I began to feel that things were getting right for me to really have a chance, nothing I could really put my finger on made me feel that way other than the change in the weather but I started to grow confident, not the same confidence I would have when I imagined my Quebec but a real confidence that we could really do this , the only problem was no one had seen a moose yet and there were only 3 days left in our hunt, I didnt care I knew Silvan and I could do this.
The morning of day four brought with it more calm weather, so calm in fact that the lake in front of our cabins looked like a sheet of glass, this was a first. When Silvan and I arrived at the bay where we were going to hunt on this day and had unloaded our gear from the boat, I told him that today we were going to get our moose to which he agreed and we both left down the trail with a real sense that we could not make any mistakes because this morning may be our only real shot at some descent weather. We walked as one hunter to the marsh, every time my foot would land on the earth Silvan would place his foot at the same time, this way to the moose if we made any sounds it would sound like another moose. We were both really in tune with our environment and our place in it as such we made the 20 minute hike as quiet as a moose. Our stand location was a small point that stuck out into this huge marsh with a few trees cleared out of the way to give the hunter the best vantage of the marsh. Upon our arrival I quietly removed my pack and place it upon the ground and Silvan I stood silent for nearly ten minutes listening for the moose, Silvan broke a few branches to simulate the sounds of a moose breaking branches in hopes of getting a response from a moose, but this was not to be, the woods were silent so we stood there for a few more minutes. Silvan turned to walk back down the path to return to the woods and call the moose he did not have to tell me what he was doing as we now were working together as a team and were anticipating each others moves. I began to scan the marsh in front of me for signs of movement to no avail but I was so focused on the marsh in front of me I had not realized Silvan was only 10 yards away and trying desperately to get my attention, finally he somehow is successful and as my eyes make there way to his face I can see he is mouthing the words moose, moose,moose and trying to causally point to my right, where we had just walked in. Okay now this was not in the game plan and I could not see the moose yet but somehow I had to get to where Silvan was without spooking the moose. I was somehow calm and slowly made my way to Silvan and as I approached, the moose began to take shape in the distance, it was not a 60 inch bull but a mature cow at 100 yards and walking in the tall marsh grass oblivious to Silvan and I, eureka I had found the yeti they are real I thought, I was ecstatic just to see this moose and forgot my delusions of grandeur and my 60 inch bull this animal would be the one that returned to the United States with me. I knelt on my right knee and prepared my muzzle loading rifle to shoot, raising the gun I rested my left elbow upon my left knee for support, steadied the cross hairs on her vitals and squeezed the trigger, the whole world disappeared in a cloud of white smoke. Silvan and I frantically tried to peer the the smoke to see if the beast had been downed but to my surprise she still stood, okay now its time to panic, I just missed and I only have one shot, this never happens I thought, do I have time to reload, as I looked to Silvan in panic I see he is readying his 7MM magnum and handing it to me. So I just missed from the kneeling position and I know well enough and I'm thinking clearly enough to know I need to get to some real support and notice a small pine tree 10 yards in front of us, we make our way to the tree upon which I take up a good support and again settle the cross hairs upon her vitals and squeezed the trigger, this time no smoke but the beast still stands. Okay I went from panic to a state of utter chaos and retract the bolt to the rear to chamber another round, during this process I somehow ejected the magazine and dropped all of the shells to the ground, Yep thats it I'm loosing it, I take a deep breath to regain my composure, calmly reach down and grab one single round and feed it directly into the chamber and close the bolt. By now the moose is moving again, not fast but she is leaving the marsh, I again take a support from the side of the pine tree settle the cross hairs upon her vitals and squeeze the trigger, this time the bullet found its home and downed the animal, wow what a relief, things were starting to go horribly wrong, I don't know if I could have taken the pressure of shooting again. Silvan and I stood there and had good laugh about how I was really messing things up but we were both really excited to go claim our moose, we just had to give her time to expire so we waited and laughed at me for while longer. You know in that moment I realized I had made a new friend the kind of friend you can only make through the trials and tribulations one faces on such an adventure.
We made our way tho the moose and I began to realize how tall the marsh was, the grass that I had thought was only a few feet tall was more like 5 feet tall its no wonder these huge beasts can hide so well. At last we get to the moose she is a beautiful fully matured moose who looks to weigh about 800 lbs and will feed my family for quite some time. Now back to the part about me missing the first two shots, I don't do that and was kind of having a problem dealing with it, well it turns out that all three rounds had found their mark and I really did not need to shoot the last two, the moose is just not a deer and does not respond the same way they do when they are hit so I had assumed I was missing my shots, but for the good side of me shooting her three times she did not suffer and was downed in less than 1 minute from the first shot to the last.
So as you can tell my Quebec does not exist and I am glad for it, in my Quebec I did not allow for the true meaning of such an adventure, the highs the lows and the chance to meet new and interesting people and spend some quality time with some people I have known for my entire life.
My New Friends, the Crew at Taggart Bay, from left to right. Simone, Silvain, Vern, Victor (in the back) Silvette (the cook) and Silvain
My Moose
My Father
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